We caught up with Brad Hoffman (Team Principal of Monster Energy Star Yamaha Racing), while on a recent trip to test the all-new 2023 Yamaha YZ450F at Star Racing's new (to them) facility, to ask him why the team chose to Cairo, Georgia.
Michael Lindsay – Vital MX: I’m here with Brad Hoffman, who is the co-owner and Team Principal of Monster Energy Star Yamaha Racing. We were lucky enough to spend a few days out here at their facility for the 2023 Yamaha YZ450 intro. During that presentation, Brad, you were telling us about your reasons for moving here. You got the property, what about two years ago or so? You talked about all the thought that went into the decision. It wasn't a knee jerk reaction of, “Oh, this property is available”. What were some of the locations and states you guys weighed out in this decision-making process?
Brad Hoffman - Team Principal for Monster Energy Star Yamaha Racing: We talked about Texas a little bit. We talked about the Clermont, Tampa, and Orlando, FL areas. That's pretty popular. We even talked about where ClubMX is. At one point Club actually asked us to move on their property. They would make us a little place and. They were pretty nice about that actually. We called around to riders that were in those areas. Shane McElrath was a guy we knew that grew up at Club a lot. We talked to guys that were in Clermont to find the positives and the negatives. We talked to Jeremy Martin because he had trained at the Nest, Club, and he'd trained at Carmichael's. Jeremy wasn't on the team at the time. He was on Geico still. And I said, “Man, you've been to all these places. What's your thoughts”? He said, “Honestly, the best of everything was the Goat Farm”. That was a big thing. You know, I think even Club gets pretty cold in the winter and it can be a problem where here we never had frozen dirt one time last year. We were worried about that same thing in Texas, a little too cold, maybe even more rain. So far so good here. Weather is a big factor in it. And it was pretty mild last winter. Most days by the time it warmed up, at the coldest it was 55 to 60.
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